George Meyers was my mentor, my friend, and the person I will always wish I was. It was wonderful to hear that Tim Wheeler had completed George’s biography. I bought two copies immediately and plowed into it with glee.

Book Review:

Tim Wheeler, “No Power Greater. The Life and Times of George A Meyers.” International Publishers, New York, 2024.

To the rest of the world, George was a union organizer, the very first President of the Maryland Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), an American soldier, and one of the leading Communists thrown in prison during the 1950’s witch hunt. But to me, he was an inspiration.

When George was working as the head of the Trade Union Commission of the Communist Party, he spent most of his time visiting union leaders and union activists around the country. I was lucky enough to fit into his itinerary a number of times during his last years. He died in 1999.

Although I have never quite lived up to it, I tried and am trying hard to live up to George’s advice on how to conduct oneself within the unions. “Disagree without being disagreeable,” he would say. I’ve lost my temper and alienated people a lot, but it would have been even worse if I hadn’t known that George was right. On our side of the class struggle, we don’t need big egos and avoidable divisions. Save your anger for the bosses.

Even more important was George’s explanation why he had graduated from being a devoted union leader to being barely-paid-at-all as a Communist. His analogy was about union contracts. “No matter what you win with a new contract,” he would explain, “You still have to win it all over again in the next one.”

In other words, working families can only get temporary victories as long as the bosses retain power. They are always eager, and eventually able, to take your victories away from you. It’s true of union contracts, as most of us old-timers can verify, but it is also true of every other kind of victory for working families.

George saw a lot more social progress than any of us alive today have seen, and he also saw it evaporating after, say, 1980. He was part of the formation of the CIO and the greatest organizing years of American history. He saw, and participated in, the defeat of world fascism. He saw, and participated in the great accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement, the Women’s Movement, and the anti-war movement in the 1960s. He saw labor win Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, OSHA, weekends, family leave, and other monumental changes.

He also saw Reagan rip through our rights like a ripsaw. He was spared the sight of the current Supreme Court shredding democracy and successfully attacking all the rights that working families had won, but he would have understood it. He knew that all our victories are temporary as long as the bosses are still in charge.

George Meyers taught me, and many others, a lot of things, but his teachings weren’t what affected me most. It was his demeanor. I have never known anyone so steady and calm, so contemplative, so accepting, and so positive. It amazed me. Here was a man who had been to the heights of labor success and then was imprisoned like a common criminal for years for the crime of having taught others to think. He had suffered decades of anti-communist lies and hatred. He had seen legions of weaker friends fall away.

And yet, George Meyers was the happiest man I ever met in my life. He had this great big, lopsided smile that warmed everyone who met him. George Meyer’s beaming face was a face of a better future, of a great and wonderful future. I suppose he knew that it was unlikely that he would live to see that future, but it was enough for him to know that such a future existed and that he, George Meyers, was already a part of it because of the work he was doing.

I reflected on George’s positive outlook and gorgeous smile when I heard that he was seriously ill and in hospital. I tried to understand how a man who had struggled so hard, suffered so much, and contributed so much to an apparently thankless world, could be such a happy inspiration. I think I figured it out during George’s last days when I wrote and dedicated this song, “The Winning Side”

Oh we know him when we see him
By the smile upon his face
And we all know that he loves us
Cause he loves the human race

(chorus)
No they couldn’t stop his smiling
No matter how they tried
Cause in his heart, he always knew
He was on the winning side!

Oh the bosses thought they had him
When they threw him in the cell
But they didn’t know George Meyers
He just smiled and wished them well!

When the others talk of quitting
And life’s become a trial
We know we’ll go on fighting
Cause we’ll see George Meyers’ smile!

I wrote this song when I heard that George was in the hospital. I recorded it on cassette and sent it to him. A week or so later, I learned that he had died. A month or so after that, my cassette was returned, unopened. So, as far as I know, George never got to hear his tribute. Others heard it at his wake.

Although we lost George Meyers’ corporeal presence, we’ll never lose his teachings nor his inspiration. And now, we have his biography. Thanks, Tim Wheeler!

the end